Fatwood opinions ?

fatwood works great! you can use it inplace of magnesium as a fire starter. just scrape with knife or strike blade until you have a good fibrouse pile and the strike your steel into the nest created. check out this site, if you are interested in the video he goes into great deal about several aspects of survival including use of fatwood and cotton ball with vasiline jelly in tinfoil (nuggets - a cheap and very packable oil lamp that will burn with a 2-4 inch flame for about an hour).

www.survivalandoutdoorsafety.com

i've use several of his techniques as well as his video with my boy scout troop and have used parts of his kit as a resource for building my own kit.

Great idea Awfoxden. But I would imagine that petroleum jelly, as a hydrocarbon, would make quite a lot of soot on your cooking pans as it burns.

Anyone know for sure?

it does put off a good bit of soot. my idea behind it is similar to the wet fire nugets. you can light it pretty easily with match, lighter, magnesium and flint, or fatwood. it burns a long time, so even in a wet and somewhat windy environement you have time to get tinder burning. once burning, you can fish out the nuget and extinguish it and reuse it later if need be. i've not used it to try cooking. could be an option i quess.

i use a popcan alchohol stove with heet brand methenol gas treatment. the stove i have fits nicely in one of those small nesbit metal stoves. the metal stove acts as a pot holder and cuts down on wind as well as protects the popcan stove when not in use. you can also use the metal stove as a platform to start a small fire if needed.

the other nice thing about the fatwood is that one small little piece can be used to start many fires and can be slipped into just about any vacant space no matter how small in a survival kit just by cutting it down to size.

also the popcan stove and nesbit frame weight substantially less and take up less room than my optimus nova and doesn't sound like a jet engine when lit.

on a couple of post it was said that you will find fatwood in a stump if it is a washed out grey color, does it have to be that color or can you find it in any pine tree stump?

ive also heard that it depends what season the pine tree was downed in order for in to have fatwood, what season would that be?

ive recently seen a few pine tree stumps on a trail, thought i would go check them out and see if there is any fatwood.

On the stumps - as the pine dies and weathers, it turns grey in color. If you split open a piece of the wood you will find that it is only grey on the exterior due to weathering.

Ive never heard it called fatwood. We call it fat lighter here. Its great for camping fires.

Yep - fat lighter down here too. Same stuff.

Also known around here as lighter pine, pine knots and also fat wood.

While hunting with my SIL in Louisiana, their deer lease in in a 450 acre pine plantation.
I think they are yellow pine, but it had already been cut down once (maybe more), and there was a good amount of dead logs as well as stumps.

I am always looking for useful stuff, so I started to kick at the dead logs, and sure enough it was mostly resin.
Seems the wood with out the resin rots away, and leaves the resin filled wood behind.
I suspect that is what happens to the stumps, it doesn't really "collect" it was there from the start, just had wood around it. Might be wrong, just an observation.

I harvested a couple of pretty good logs, the knots where the branches joined the trunk were just about all resin.

When I got home cut it up in 6" lengths, split it into popsicle stick size and have a good supply.

I use it in the wood stove in my garage/shop and at the cabin as fire starter for my wood stoves.
Not worried about build up as I only use a couple of my 6" sticks to get the kindling going.

I did save the sawdust when I chainsawed it up.
That is a featured component of my egg carton, sawdust, and wax fire starters.

http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...ead.php?t=8315

Fatwood also grows in White Pine in Northern Wisconsin. The old stumps are now approx. 150 years old, and still strong. Pine pitch must be a heck of a preservative.

I have found it far easier to make my own, tho. I split oak kindling into small and various sizes. Dip in melted parafin wax.

Just as good as any fatwood. The real secret of this plan is the tinder that I make in the same way: Take any old cotton fabric: jeans, bedsheet, and the like. Tear into strips and dip in the melted wax.

Use the match to light the cloth, and the cloth catches the "fatwood". Instant fire.

One side note I might make about the season the trees were cut: Most of the white pine in Wisconsin would have been cut in winter. The forests where it grows tends to be wet. The frozen ground made it easier to transport. I believe the lumber camps were much less active in summer.

-Mert

Also called it that. Once upon a time, in the forest known as Uwharrie (Pineland for you Army SF types), a young, not too bright, SF student discovered that a lighter knot was great for fire starting and keeping burning. It kept burning so well, that when the bad guys (82nd) attacked the camp and he stepped on it to put it out before bugging out, he had one minor oversight; he had issue rubber soled combat boots. When he finally found a place to hole up, he smelled rubber burning and subsequently felt the hot foot. Yep, the lighter stuck in his sole and kept burning. Big lesson!!! OK, OK, ........... it was me.

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Originally Posted by Old GI

Also called it that. Once upon a time, in the forest known as Uwharrie (Pineland for you Army SF types), a young, not too bright, SF student discovered that a lighter knot was great for fire starting and keeping burning. It kept burning so well, that when the bad guys (82nd) attacked the camp and he stepped on it to put it out before bugging out, he had one minor oversight; he had issue rubber soled combat boots. When he finally found a place to hole up, he smelled rubber burning and subsequently felt the hot foot. Yep, the lighter stuck in his sole and kept burning. Big lesson!!! OK, OK, ........... it was me.

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That right there is what Sourdough means when he says "boots in the field" experience.:lol::lol:

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Originally Posted by Robbie Roberson

Hello, I am a fatwood nut.........anyone else like it ? Anyone else find it in the woods in old sawed stumps ?

I have many old fatwood stumps around my house and use much of it to start fires in my wood stove.

I did a search and did not see any topics on this......


Robbie Roberson. ;)

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pine fat is the most useful wood. insect proof,water proof,extreemly flameable,very hard,provides the sharpest of splinters, visualy beautiful. i am an advocate for the use of pine fat and pine sap. watch my video called "Discovering the power of pins sap" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxJC3xWLQKE see some additional uses that you may not have thought of......

I buy fatwood from Walmart and Lowes it comes in 5lb boxes, pieces are about 8" long and 1" wide Walmarts price is around ten bucks til end of season they slash it to seven dollars or so, Lowes is around nine dollars again both places sell 5lb boxes. I have also harvested my own in the wild but find it reasonably priced and much easier to just buy. And yes the stuff is awesome for fire starting I like to grind some up and make a powder which comes in quite handy and catches a spark well.

I dare say that if you bought fat-lighter from a store, it probably was harvested by someone in the southeast region. Pretty much every dead pine tree i've ever walked up on in the bush is a fatlighter stump. My BIL harvests it around this time of year from his own back yard and takes it farther north to sell at some type of flea market. (I really dont like exploiting nature for profit, but oh well)
My grandmother uses it to light the fires in her fireplace, though it doesnt take much, and just to add to the campfire uses, it WILL force any kindling you put on top to dry. It burns long and hot. I usually keep a 1" x 1" x 10" piece in the floorboard of my truck during hunting season. this is enough to make a nice warm fire even if you have wet wood. I use it to light the grill because I just can't stand the taste of lighter fluid.
the sap is the same stuff that turns to "amber" after being exposed to air for a long time.
I believe it is also what was used to seal sailing vessels.
I might add that it keeps for a long time and is extremely bug resistant. We've had a stack out back of my grandma's place for at least 25 years and I still use fatlighter out of the same stack that my grandad harvested all those years ago.

Just look for a downed pine tree that has rotted away. The outer wood will rot first leaving the resin rich inner wood "core" of the tree still intact. These pine cores take a long time to decompose and look like a rotten fence post on the ground. Break it up and it will burn like crazy. You don't need to look for special trees; any old pine tree works.

Love it. Always have a supply on hand due to few fatwood stumps on my property. Best.

Figured i'd just add my limited knowledge to an already great thread on fatwood, pine knots and such.

This is how I find it. I find it on many red or scotch pine stumps, branches, and logs. They don't have to be burned from fire to make fatwood. Most of our pines have been attacked by bugs and that too will cause the tree to put out extra sap in defense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAvS0czvwkM

This vid shows pine knots. They can also be found on dead branches of live pine trees. You can make makeshift torches out of them and the like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpddjeQfLhM

This vid is demonstrating the fatwood/ pine knots performance in wet weather which is where it truly excels. For one it's waterproof, for two it is found in areas where other dry wood might not be found.
All the wood used to start this fire was wet, except the fatwood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOScD7GIWxU

Not to mention, it makes a great, IMO the best, natural frictionless bearing block for the firebow method of firestarting. You can see at the end of this vid the socket in the bearing block is hardly worn and it was used to start 4 or 5 different fires. I'm still using it to date and it has started over thirty fires now with only two sockets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIz07q2Ni-Q

Another great post, RWC. This is an area I'm pretty weak in. Your vids are really helpful.

posted yesterday in the making stuff section about fat wood to bring up this link for more research, niether I or AB have been able to find it up here, my head trapper is the one who pointed it out to me in a burned out tree. i need to research this more.
man do i need high spped internet so i can see these vids you guys are posting, frusterating.....